Chapter 3 - THE GHOST IN THE GLASS
The elevator shaft echoed with the metallic groans of the building.
I stared at the faded photograph in Adrian’s hand. My mother’s smile looked like a relic from a different universe. Before the bruises. Before the debt. Before my father walked out the door and never looked back.
“Who is Elias Thorne?” I demanded, the panic in my chest sharpening into a fierce, protective anger. “And why does he have a picture of my mother?”
Adrian checked the magazine of his weapon. His movements were precise, devoid of wasted energy.
“Elias Thorne built the syndicate I now run,” Adrian said flatly. “He was my mentor. Twelve years ago, he crossed a line I couldn't ignore. I took his empire and forced him into exile. Everyone believed he was dead.”
“He’s not dead,” Vanessa whispered, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. “He’s been watching you, Adrian. He came to my sister’s house yesterday. He told me you built your throne on a lie.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened, but he didn't address Vanessa’s accusation. He turned to the elevator’s control panel, using the butt of his gun to smash the plastic casing over the manual override switch.
“Why does Elias want my family?” I asked, stepping closer to Adrian, refusing to be ignored. “My brother is fourteen. He has severe neuropathy. He spends half the week in a wheelchair. We don't have anything worth taking.”
Adrian looked at me. The coldness in his eyes softened for a fraction of a second, replaced by something that looked like regret.
“Because your father didn't just abandon you, Mara,” Adrian said quietly. “Your father was Elias Thorne’s chief accountant. And the day he disappeared, he took a ledger containing the locations of Elias’s offshore accounts. Elias believes your mother hid it. And he believes she passed the secret to you.”
The world tilted.
My father. The man who couldn't remember my birthday, the man who let the electric company shut off our power in the middle of winter, was the accountant for the Chicago mob? It made no sense. It made horrible, tragic sense.
“We have to get to Owen,” I breathed, the reality crashing down on me.
“We will,” Adrian said. He flipped the manual override switch. The elevator groaned, reversing direction, heading up toward the lobby instead of down to the garage.
“The garage is compromised,” Adrian explained. “If Elias sent a hit squad to the dining room, he has men waiting by my car. We go out the front delivery doors.”
The elevator doors opened onto the ground floor corridor. The building was in pure chaos. Sirens wailed in the distance. Security guards were running toward the restaurant levels.
Adrian grabbed Vanessa’s hand, his grip firm but not punishing. “Stay close to the wall. Don't speak.”
He looked at me. “Can you keep up?”
“I walk eight miles a shift in cheap shoes,” I replied, gripping the silver compass tightly in my hand. “Just point the way.”
We slipped through the service corridors, avoiding the main lobby. The cold Chicago night air hit us as we burst out of a side loading dock. Rain had started to fall, slicking the pavement and washing the neon reflections of the city into blurry streaks.
Adrian didn't go to a sleek black SUV. He walked briskly to an unremarkable, dented blue sedan parked near the dumpsters. A ghost car.
He unlocked it, shoved Vanessa into the back, and motioned for me to get in the passenger seat. He slid behind the wheel, hot-wiring the ignition with terrifying speed.
The engine roared to life. We tore out of the alley, merging into the frantic downtown traffic just as three police cruisers flew past us toward Blackthorn House.
“Where do you live?” Adrian asked.
“West Ridge,” I said. “On Devon Avenue. Above the old bakery.”
Adrian nodded, weaving through the traffic with expert precision.
The ride was agonizing. Every red light felt like a physical blow. I kept looking at the shattered face of the silver compass in my hands. My mother had taken her secrets to the grave two years ago, dying of heart failure brought on by stress and exhaustion. If she had a ledger worth millions, we wouldn't have been eating expired soup for a decade.
“Adrian,” Vanessa said from the back seat, her voice trembling. “Elias told me… he told me he already owned the waitress. I didn't understand what he meant.”
I turned around to look at her. “What does that mean?”
“He said he bought your brother’s medical debt,” Vanessa whispered, her eyes wide with fear. “He said he owns the hospital board. If he snaps his fingers, Owen’s treatments stop forever.”
My blood ran cold. Owen’s treatments for his nerve pain cost four thousand dollars a month. We survived because of a mysterious anonymous donor program at the hospital that covered eighty percent of the cost. I had cried tears of joy the day we were approved.
It wasn't a charity. It was a leash. Elias Thorne had been keeping my brother alive just so he could hold the knife to his throat when the time was right.
“I’m going to kill him,” I said. The words tasted like ash, but I meant them.
Adrian glanced at me. He didn't offer empty comforts. He simply pressed harder on the gas pedal.
We screeched to a halt in the alley behind my apartment building. The rain was falling heavily now. The bakery downstairs was dark.
My apartment was on the second floor. A single, flickering yellow bulb illuminated the exterior metal staircase.
“Wait here,” Adrian ordered, drawing his weapon.
“Not a chance,” I said, already out of the car. I wasn't leaving my brother's safety to a mob boss I met thirty minutes ago.
Adrian didn't argue. We climbed the metal stairs silently.
When we reached the landing, my heart dropped into my stomach.
The heavy wooden door to my apartment was slightly ajar. The deadbolt had been violently splintered, the wood shattered around the metal casing.
Adrian raised a finger to his lips. He pushed the door open with his foot, leading with his gun.
I followed right behind him.
The apartment was wrecked. The cheap sofa was slashed open. The bookshelves were pulled down, my mother’s few remaining paperback novels scattered across the cheap linoleum floor.
“Owen!” I screamed, abandoning all caution.
Silence.
I ran toward the small back bedroom. The door was off its hinges. The wheelchair sat empty in the corner.
“Owen!”
A soft, scraping sound came from the narrow space between the bed and the wall.
I dropped to my knees. Huddled in the shadows, clutching a baseball bat tightly to his chest, was my fourteen-year-old brother. His face was pale, his breathing shallow and ragged, but his eyes were fierce.
“Mara,” he gasped, lowering the bat slightly.
“I’ve got you,” I sobbed, pulling him into a tight embrace. He felt so fragile, his bones sharp against my arms. “Are you hurt? Did they touch you?”
“No,” Owen whispered, wincing as he shifted his stiff legs. “I heard them breaking the door. I hid. They tore the place apart looking for something. But they didn't find me.”
Adrian stepped into the doorway, his gun lowered, scanning the room.
Owen looked over my shoulder at the imposing man in the ruined expensive suit. Then, he looked down at his own hand.
“They didn't find me,” Owen repeated, his voice shaking. “But one of the men… he stopped right in front of the bed before they left. He knew I was here, Mara. He dropped this on the floor and told me to give it to you.”
Owen opened his tightly clenched fist.
Resting in his pale palm was a heavy, braided gold bracelet. The metal was dull, tarnished with age, and stained with something dark and rusted.
Adrian Cross stopped breathing.
He stared at the bracelet, all the color draining from his face. The untouchable king of Chicago looked as though he had just seen a ghost.
“Where did you get that?” Adrian whispered, his voice cracking.
“The man dropped it,” Owen said softly.
May you like
Adrian took a slow, unsteady step forward. He reached out and picked up the gold bracelet. His thumb traced the intricate braiding.
“That belonged to my mother,” Adrian said, his eyes filled with a sudden, devastating sorrow. “Elias Thorne took it off her wrist the night he murdered her.”
